A blog for those who may have read the Mastering Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or Mastering Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 books and, of course, for those who haven't but might be interested in SharePoint's secrets nonetheless.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

I'm back from the SharePoint Conference 2012, and wow am I am tired. I didn't get to do all the things I wanted to do, and want to apologize to all the people I expected to see while I was there. I just spent too much time in the labs this year. I promise not to do that in the future.

Speaking of the Hands-On Labs from the SharePoint Conference. For those of you who were there, you know that we had our fair share of problems in the labs, which resulted in the labs being up and down in terms of availability.

And because of that, everyone assumed they'd just do the labs online.

AND YOU CAN!

Yes, the labs are completely available (you should be a paying SharePoint Conference customer, of course) online from the MySPC link on the SharePoint Conference 2012 site. Just log into MySPC, click the Hands-On Labs tab, then the hands on lab link. That will take you to a site where all the labs are listed in a page very, very reminscent of the one used in the hands-on labs all week. Keep in mind that the labs should be available to you to use for the next two months or so. Feel free to try them, show them to coworkers, etc. That's what they are there for. [EDIT: The labs will be available for three months online, so until Feb. 15th, 2012. Extra time is good.]

EDITED TO ADD: A link has been added to the Hands-On Labs page off of MySPC that lets you download all of the lab manuals in one zip file. So for those of you who were looking for the lab manuals by themselves- they're there now. Woo hoo!

The Lab Menu page for the SPC 2012 Hands-On Lab online environment

Unfortunately, some of the small problems that plagued us proctors in the labs are still there for the online labs. So to that end, because you gentle folks, using the labs online, won't have a proctor behind you to help you at your computer at home or the office, here are some very important tips.

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ADDITIONAL EDIT: It looks like the labs that require an Office 365 online account require you to create your own FREE 30-day TRIAL of Office 365 Mid to Enterprise size business, Plan E3 first (click this link to sign up).

If a lab manual says "Start on the site collections page of the SharePoint admin center (for example, https://-admin.sharepoint.com/)." or anything else related to a your_tenant site- use your Office 365 trial account's tenant address for "your_tenant".

In other words, the lab will not work when it requires that address to continue, unless you have signed up for a free trial or have an Office 365 enterprise account. That's the only way to have a tenant-admin.sharepoint.com site that can definitely do all the things the lab wants to do (as far as I know, please comment below if a lower version of Office 365 can be used). My apologies. I had hoped that issue would have been addressed before those labs went online.

The labs I've noticed that need an Office 365 account are: HOL006 and HOL007. These are developer labs. There may be more I haven't seen yet. So do not fear. If you want to do those labs, just sign up for the trial version of the E3 edition of Office 365 yourself- then you can do any of the labs that refer to Office 365 without issue.

I've also noticed that some of the labs open with the remnants of someone else's lab already there. Sorry about that. Apparently they are recycling existing VMs for the online labs too. If you find that you start a lab, and there are windows already open in your SharePoint VM (whichever that is, more on that in item 2 below), just close the windows that are open. If you cannot save a file, project, or whatever with the name the lab suggests in the manual- try it again, but add a number the the end of the file name (like a "1" or "23" or something like that). That should help make the file name unique. Otherwise your labs should work fine, no harm done.
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1) When you select a lab from the list and click Start Lab, it will open a bunch of VMs conveniently located under tabs. You don't need to use all the VMs for your lab, you'll be logging into only one of them- the others are used for other labs or are just needed in the background, like the domain controller. There are buttons to the right of the tabs. The one that you really need to know is the RECONNECT button (looks like a green arrow pointing at a server icon). More on that below.

An example of the VM page after you Start Lab. Note the first tab is Lab Menu (so you can get back to the lab menu list page), and the RECONNECT button on the far right of the tabs

Keep in mind that the VMs will open for the lab, but the LAB MANUAL will not. To open the lab manual, go back to the lab menu page (the first page you were on when you went to the lab site, it is under the Lab Menu tab on the left if you're in the VMs), and click the little link that says "To open the lab manual, click here" that shows up at the bottom of the lab list when you select a lab (you can see it in the first image in this post). Clicking the "here" link will open the manual into a different browser window. Every time you select a lab, the option to open it's manual shows up in the box below the lab list, just click the here link. Clicking the link also will refresh the manual window, should you need to.

Also- if you want to keep your VMs open and just go to the next lab, you can go back to the Lab Menu, select the next lab you want to do, and just open the manual for that lab there. You don't really have to End Lab on the VMs you're using to start a new lab. Just a tip for you to save time.

2) The lab manuals never explicitly say WHICH VM you should actually log into to do your lab. I don't know why, since that's a pretty big deal. And this is where a little glitch in the labs shows up:

-- For the labs that are IT PRO focused (they're usually labs numbered HOL021 or higher, the VM set ends with a "Lync" tab)- you should log into the server that has SharePoint 2010 installed on it. The server that has SharePoint and SQL installed on it is mistakenly under the DC tab. I know, crazy right? There was a mix up where the SP and DC tabs were switched, so the Domain Controller is under the SP tab, and the SharePoint server is under the DC tab. I'd assumed it would be fixed before the labs went online.

So to use the HOL for IT Pros, make sure you log into the VM that is under the DC tab. Always check to make sure that SharePoint is installed on the VM you're working on before you start working.

--For the labs that are DEVELOPER focused (they're the labs numbered from HOL001 to HOL020, the VM set ends with a Win8 tab). SharePoint may be installed in the VM under the WIN8 tab. Please make sure it has SharePoint and the developer tools you need to do the lab before you get started.

3) Sometimes the remote desktop access to the VM you're on can get disconnected. It's okay. If the VM you are working on goes black and says it is disconnected, just click the little button to the far right of the VM tabs that looks like a green arrow pointing at a server (you can see it in the second image in this article).

This is the RECONNECT button, and will reconnect you to your VM's desktop. No fear, the VM is happily chugging along in the background, unaware that you can't see it. Nothing in your lab has been lost or delayed. It just lost your desktop connection for a moment. We are going across the internet, you know.

If you get a dialog box saying one of the other VMs in your set disconnected, don't worry about it. You don't really need desktop access to those VMs, they'll run just fine without you connecting to their desktops remotely.

4) As far as I know, even if the manual tells you to hit F5 on your keyboard, such as in Visual Studio, do not hit F5 on the keyboard. That will likely refresh your connection to the lab site itself, kicking you out of the lab. It is best, if you need to refresh, compile, or whatever you would use F5 for, do it using a button on the toolbar, or select it in on of the menus in the menu bar of the application (such as Internet Explorer) in the VM you are working on. Just an FYI to save you the time of having to start over if you get kicked out.

I hope you get to use the labs like crazy, and if you have questions, feel free to ask in the comments of this article. (mind you, I was trained to support the lab environment, not to memorize every lab manual available, so I might not be able to answer all step by step questions)

Thanks to all of you who attended the SharePoint Conference, especially those dearhearts that had issues using the labs while I was there. I'm here for you bro. ;P

3 comments:

Hello, I have been going through the HOL's but noticed that in HOL017 the instructions asks me to go to the (already pre-created) http://intranet.contoso.com/sites/contoso site. However, this site doesn't even exist on my lab environment and I'm unable to proceed with the labs. Did you run into this issue? If so, would you know how to resolve this?

Hello, I have been going through the HOL's but noticed that when I got to HOL017 the manual asks me to go to http://intranet.contoso.com/sites/contoso. However, this site collection doesn't even exist in my lab environment and I'm unable to proceed. I assume this site collection was pre-loaded into the lab environment with content to perform the labs. Did you run into this issue as well? If so, do you know the resolution?

My apologies for getting back to you so late. Unfortunately, I did not get to test every lab, and don't know how to resolve the issue. I hope you did manage to work around the issue and finish the lab.

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Welcome to the Adventures of a Server Grrl-the WSS edition

This site was created as a location to dish about the Mastering Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (and Mastering SharePoint Foundation 2010) books, as a place to communicate with me directly, and allow me to communicate directly with you. There were so many things I wanted to say that didn't make it to print. So I felt I needed a place to tell you about them.

So please join me here as I essentially continue to write my book, covering more and more WSS 3.0 stuff as I learn them. From my desk to yours.

Gentle suggestions for the next edition, improvements, and questions welcome. : )

Twitter username: cacallahan

(please note that the original content of this blog is the copywritten material of CallahanTech, 2007-2012. All rights reserved.)

To buy on Amazon

Happenin' Things

In 2013:

I did two sessions about SharePoint 2013 for the PacIT Pro folks at TechDays San Francisco.

I'll be doing book signings and attending TechEd North America in New Orleans this year.

I'll be speaking at SPTechCon in Boston in August, doing a 3 hour pre-conference tutorial, and a breakout session

In 2012, I did speak at or otherwise work TechEd North America, TechEd Europe (in Amsterdam), SharePoint Conference 2012, and SEF 2012 in Stockholm Sweden.

In November, I will be visiting Sweden for the first time as a speaker for the SEF 2011 event (SharePoint and Exchange Forum 2011), November 14-15th. I will be doing two sessions: "SharePoint Design Fundamentals" and "Monitoring your SharePoint Foundation server at no extra cost." I will also probably be giving out a copy of my book at the event.

At the end of October, October 29th, 2011 to be exact, I am speaking at the SharePoint Saturday event in Cincinatti. My session is going to cover "Permissions, things I've learned the hard way." If you're in town, please stop on by.

I won an "Unsung Hero" award to attend and staff the SharePoint Conference in Anaheim, CA, October 3-6th, 2011. I will be working the Hands-On labs (just like I did for TechEd this year). If you are attending the event, please stop by and visit. Frankly, doing the labs hands-on have always been the best part of these events. Why watch someone do what you can actually do yourself? I'll be posting on twitter (as cacallahan) my specific hours if you would like to stop by and say hi!

For September 2011, I'll be the featured speaker at the SharePoint TechDay in San Francisco on the 23rd. It will be a whopping 6 hour session, covering all kinds of topics that a SharePoint adminstrator needs to know. A kind of "kitchen sink" session, this will focus on what an administrator who might have inherited a SharePoint implementation needs to know by the end of their first work day. Figure out what kind of implementation you have, your namespace, the web applications, their security and settings, the site collections, and sites. Along the way, see what kind of permissions are being used, suggestions on how to configure AAM, managed paths, and more. Take control of your SPF implementation, don't let it control you.

What is essentially a day long, custom course, this session will run from 10am-5pm on Friday, September 23rd at the Microsoft Office in San Francisco. It is not entirely free, but very inexpensive at $99 a person. To register go to http://techdays.org/2011/09/spwithca/.

In August 2011, I'll be doing a double-header in Columbus. On the 18th I'll be speaking at the BuckeyeSPUG (Columbus SharePoint User Group) meeting about Permissions.

Then that Saturday, August 20th, I'll be doing a session on Multi-Tenancy, what it is and why you might want to use it. So if you are in the area, please stop by.

On July 27th, 2011, I'll be in Cleveland Ohio speaking that the Cleveland SharePoint Users Group meeting. I will be covering how to create do-it-yourself dashboards and giving out a copy of my Mastering Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 book. If you're in the area, feel free to stop by.

For the week of May 16th-19th, 2011, I will be working the Hands-On labs, SharePoint and Office section at TechEd NA in Atlanta, Georgia. Hands-On labs are always my favorite part of these events- after I hear about things during a session, I can often try them, hands on, in the labs. Very useful for a servergrrl like me. Feel free to stop by.

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For the week of June 7th to the 11th I will be working as a Product Expert in the SharePoint track at TechEd 2010 in North America. This year the event will be held in New Orleans. If you are attending the event, feel free to stop by the booth, I'd be glad to meet you.

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December 16th, 2009, I'll be offering a free Windows Server 2008 R2 Firestarter Launch event at the Microsoft Offices in downtown Pittsburgh. This will be a deep dive, demonstration heavy, IT pro happening, focused on new features and capabilities of the most recent Server release.

I will be carrying this event alone, from finding the venue, to buying the refreshments, to doing all four hours of presentations. Right now I am trying to drum up more attendees, because I need a minimum of 25 people.

So if you're in the Pittsburgh area on the 16th, and would like a chance to see live demos (no high level overviews here) of new things in Server 2008R2-- like Active Directory Recycle bin (my fave), booting to VHD, Hyper-V (at the least because I'll be using it extensively all day), Power Management, Remote Server Manager (and the AD management center), powershell V2 (from an IT pro perspective of course), and much, much more-- then stop on by.

November 21st, 2009, I'll be carry a Introduction to SharePoint track at the Richmond, VA SharePoint Saturday event. (earlier in this space I'd posted that I'd be carrying most of a track, but an additional room was booked and now I am doing all four sessions)

My sessions will be back to back in four, one hour pieces. Starting with What is SharePoint, then A day in the life of a SharePoint User, then Make the most out of Lists and Libraries, and finally Make the most out of Web parts (a remake of my Frugal Admin, built-in web parts session, for those of you who have been looking to take that one but couldn't-- 'til now).

It will be held at the J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College

Parham Road Campus in Richmond Virginia. As of 11/18/09, there are still a few seats available if you want to sign up. Click the logo below to be taken to their site for more information.

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November 14th, 2009, I'll be presenting two sessions:

-- Frugal Admin: Create your own Dashboards (for those of you that missed it in Baltimore)

-- Migrating to 2010; The good, the bad, and the ugly.

At the SharePoint Saturday event in Cleveland Ohio. There will likely be a fun SharePint event afterwards, and rumor has it that attendees will get a cool SPS Cleveland pint glass as well...

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August 20th, 2009, I'm visiting the fine folks in Columbus Ohio at the Central Ohio SharePoint User Group meeting. I'll be doing the fourth part of the Frugal Admin series; "Exploiting the free online offerings for SharePoint". I'm primarily going to cover Fantastic 40 templates, Community Kit for SharePoint, Codeplex in general, solution accelerators, a few nifty blogs, some nifty SharePoint add-ons, and more. (really, whatever I can fit in the time they give me)

If you're in the area, come on by the Microsoft Office on Lyra Drive (8800 Lyra drive, suite 400 I believe) around 5:30pm.

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July 25th, 2009, I am going to be presenting a Frugal Admin series Dashboards session at the SharePoint Saturday event in Baltimore. This event is free to all attendees and will be chock full of SharePoint MVP goodness. I'll be there to give out a free copy or two of my book, sign a few, and just say hello to other SharePoint fans (and victims, lol). So if you can, stop on by. Oh, and did I mention free?

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SSWUG (the SQL Server Worldwide User Group) is rebroadcasting my sessions in a "Summer Refresher '09" event July 22nd, 23rd, and 24th. Stop by http://www.vconferenceonline.com/shows/summer09/uvc/ and sign up to see some old favorites, like "Avoid Disaster without spending a penny," "Pump up those list views," "Useful, effective templates, from Microsoft, for free," and the first three sessions of the Frugal Admin series: "How to get the most out of the built-in web parts," "How to make your own Dashboards," and "Create your own site templates."

(not a free event)

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I am not going to be presenting at TechEd this year, but I will be volunteering in the Windows Server area. Come visit if you'd like.

On April 23rd and 24th, I'll be doing some sessions for a SSWUG.org SharePoint VConference (check out their linked logo):

These sessions will be one hour apiece and are all part of the "Frugal Admin Series: How to get the most out of WSS for the least amount of cash":

-- How to get the most of the built-in web parts

-- Do it yourself dashboards

-- Make your own Custom Site Templates

Stop by, sign up, and check it out. I have a VIP code--SPVCCASP09. If you use it, it takes an additional $10 off the $125 (early bird) conference fee.

Hey, every little bit helps.

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SharePoint Saturday, DC, May 1st.

On May 1st, I'll be presenting one of the Frugal Admin series sessions, "Make your own custom site templates" at the DC SharePoint Saturday at the Reston, VA Microsoft Offices. The session will be an hour long. The event is completely free. So, if you're in the neighborhood, stop on by. I'll be glad to see ya.

Also happenin' at the SharePoint Saturday event is a charity food drive contest (http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/dc/pages/charity.aspx). So you won't just get some free training in SharePoint, you can do some good in the world as well. Check out the link and see if you can join in.

Oh, and BTW, the "prize" for the contest is an hour with the speaker of your choice. So if you've ever wanted to have a speaker's undivided attention for an hour, this is a good way to do it.

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I was just informed last night, 3/24/2009, that the event listed below has been completely cancelled. Yes, the entire 70 speaker, 110 session conference in a four star resort in Wisla, Poland has been simply cancelled.

I was to leave the US on Tues, 3/31. So as you can imagine, it came as quite a shock to be told less than a week before that all plans are off...

Crazy huh? Yes, these things can happen.

Click on the event icon below (and translate the site into your language, you can use Google Translate) to see exactly what happened. I cannot be guarantee how long the site will remain up, so don't dally if you want the inside scoop.

The first weekend in April (3/2 to 3/5), I was going to be speaking at TechFest 2009 in Wisla Poland (yay Poland!).

I was going to be doing four, hour and a half sessions from the Frugal Admin series:

-- How to get the most of the built-in web parts

-- Do it yourself dashboards

-- Make your own Custom Site Templates

-- Exploiting what's out there, how to get more free WSS stuff from the internet

Luckily I will be doing some lighter, shorter, recorded versions of the first three of them at the vconference later in the month (see below). So if you are interested in the content, that's where you can go-- cuz obviously they ain't happenin' in Poland now...

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SharePoint Conference 2009, Las Vegas, baybee!

I am not going to be presenting at this one, but it'll be chock full of SharePoint goodness. Not just an IT conference that has a SharePoint track, this one's all SharePoint all the time.

Have errata?

Just email servergrrl.wss at gmail.com if you've found a pesky editing error, printing blooper, or some other issue with the Mastering WSS 3.0 book. I gladly check that account regularly and would appreciate your feedback.

(thanks to Ricky and Dave Shellenberger for your comments, this widget's for you )